Tara Jean Bernier writes — sometimes.

Confession, or where I start telling the truth.

I’m trying in all my stories to get the feeling of the actual life across—not to just depict life—or criticize it—but to actually make it alive. So that when you have read something by me you actually experience the thing. You can’t do this without putting in the bad and the ugly as well as what is beautiful. Because if it is all beautiful you can’t believe in it. Things aren’t that way. -Ernest Hemingway

The thing is — I didn’t know how to do this — I’ve written through so many things in the past — but not — Well I just haven’t known how. Tonight — the bad and the ugly, and after that — everything else.

Dear Writer’s Block

Da Fuck?!

Look I have done ever mode of writing exercise to ensure the words would flow in some manner that assembled presentable – Not good mind you but presentable order-
But instead,
all modes of ill contrived poetic nonsense comes for from this pen.
Come on muse,
where you at?

I imagine people whispering —
Doesn’t she have anything new?
Oh sure 42 pages of absolute shit —
Not new shit
just bad shit —
that talks about absolutely nothing

Poetry I imagine happens as you peel back layers,
onion skin thin,
perhaps as stinky.
And to be almost honest,
I dear blocker of writing, have piling the layers on.

Because otherwise,
I would have to uncover more than even I have been able to let go on stage.
Because there would be verses crafted of the
“I know you hate me,” let go from my, just four years old’s mouth — or the,
“I wish I wasn’t here any more,” the crushing angst of a six-year-old,
who after being calmed by the warm water of a five-minute shower — breathes,
“Mama, I’m sorry, I don’t know what came over me.”
Oh sweet child of mine,
that my synapses run in you, I am so, so, sorry.
And then – then if I got done with the heartbreak of being a mama,
I would need to proceed through the litany of other broken heart fractures.
The failure of a marriage that I had vowed,
under a large oak tree, that stood in for god,
to stick with forever and a day–

And there is the hurt, that is friendships changing.
Those dear ones will always occupy puzzle piece shaped soul moments

And then, when done with all that tragic verse-
I would owe stanzas to fear,
couplet after couplet of —
I am not brave enough,
I can not go on alone,
I can not be my myself.

But writer’s block –
You have made all of that impossible.
So now, I dwell in the could-bes of the page —
the should-haves of the lines.

Sylvia I am not,
But confessional poet I am.
This mic is what I need,
and I will beak with out poems for you.